


embrace the color in your life

by gealbhan



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Crushes, Drawing, F/F, Fluff, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-04 23:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18353675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: “Can I draw you?”There aren’t a lot of things that can stop Aubrey in her tracks, but as Dani asks this, she freezes.





	embrace the color in your life

**Author's Note:**

> like most of my canonverse writing, i'm not entirely sure where this fits in w/ canon continuity -- definitely not the current arc so vague future probably. i mostly just wanted to project onto aubrey's adhd/add with my own lol
> 
> title is from "come over here" by sarah bettens. enjoy!

“Can I draw you?”

There aren’t a lot of things that can stop Aubrey in her tracks. She is an unstoppable force. She’s an object in constant motion that will stay in motion for an indefinite amount of time, no force powerful enough to knock her off-kilter for long. It’s hard for her _not_ to move—if she stops, she rarely does so entirely, tapping her feet together or jiggling her leg or spinning one of her many rings even when the rest of her body appears to have stopped.

But as Dani asks this, Aubrey freezes.

It’s only for a second or two before she’s slotting her fingers together in her lap, but her perpetually moving body… stops. And after her fingers are laced and she’s looking up at Dani, blinking as she processes the question, it stops again. The thirty ensuing seconds she’s sitting still again are maybe the longest continuous period of time during which she hasn’t been fidgeting even a little. (Well, okay, she thinks she can feel her toe twitching against the side of her boot. But that doesn’t count.) Dani is looking back at her, she realizes, standing in front of the couch Aubrey’s sitting on with a nervous expression. Shit, that’s right, replies are A Thing.

“Um, yeah, sure! That’d be—cool,” says Aubrey quickly, still blinking. She’s trying for a casual tone despite the flush creeping into her neck—she’s not sure if she’s more flustered by the request itself or how unexpected it had been, but at least Aubrey’s skin tone will hide her embarrassment unless Dani has some sort of heat sensors. Which she doesn’t.

… _Does_ she? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, certainly, given the myriad of other powers Aubrey knows Sylvans to have, but—

But that’s not the point, Aubrey tells herself. She begins to move again, drumming her fingertips against her knuckles and relishing in the quiet but satisfying noise it makes. Her hands are a little dry, but not enough so that touching it is uncomfortable. She holds her wriggling hands up and adds, “But I’m not really good at, like, staying still and stuff, so—”

Dani has already perked up, though, and her smile—full of sharp, shiny white teeth and creating dimples on her cheeks—is contagious. She laughs softly. “I’m just planning on doing a few figure studies, so you don’t have to worry about staying still.” She squeezes her sketchbook against her chest. “So do you wanna…?”

“Oh,” says Aubrey, a beat later than she thinks is expected as she sits slightly up, “you meant right now?”

Dani nods and huffs another little laugh. It’s the most adorable sound Aubrey’s ever heard. “My room is a lot more suited for, uh, this kind of thing,” she says, tapping the cover of her sketchbook and jerking her head to the side. “And there’s plenty of room for Dr. Harris Bonkers to hang around.”

“Thanks for using his full name and title, but—” Aubrey looks down to the other end of the couch, where her very large rabbit is lying on his side with one leg kicked up to rest on the nearest arm of the couch. She can’t help a snort. “I think he’ll be fine here. Right, Dr. Harris Bonkers?”

She reaches out to pat his belly. Mid-snore, he paws at her hand, missing the mark entirely in his current state. Aubrey laughs and squeezes his fuzzy paw before getting to her feet. She trusts everyone in the Lodge at the moment not to disturb Dr. Harris Bonkers’ rest, and anyway, even if someone tried to, the good doctor would doze through it and/or try to bite anyone with ill intent’s hands off. He’s a very well-trained rabbit.

Aubrey turns her attention back to Dani with a nervous—but, like, _lowkey_ nervous—grin. “Where’s your room again?”

✎

Aubrey had briefly been in Dani’s room after the first Abomination encounter, picking up Dr. Harris Bonkers. She’d been too distracted by Dani’s smile—missing its characteristic sharp teeth, but still cute—and the gentle way she handled Dr. Harris Bonkers, plus the way they made her heart skip two beats at a time, to look around much, though. (In theory, yes, Aubrey had known she was very bisexual, and she’s dated and had feelings for a handful of people of all genders. In practice, it’s been years since she’s had a real crush and she isn’t used to encountering people as cute and interesting as Dani, okay?)

Now, still distracted by Dani but able to function marginally better, Aubrey takes the opportunity to scope out Dani’s room. It’s bigger than hers—a perk of being a longer-term resident and an employee besides, she guesses. It’s set up like a halfway point between an art studio and bedroom: a daybed in one corner, pillows tossed about but sheets unmade; next to that, a combination nightstand/dresser, lamp off and a few drawers open to reveal an admirable amount of flannel; one neat corner for Dani to presumably do her work in, facing away from the window to allow the light to hit the easel set up there. Dr. Harris Bonkers’ makeshift bed of blankets is also still sitting on the floor near Dani’s bed. Aubrey grins at the sight.

“So where do you want me?” she says as she looks up, trying to act like she’s done this before. _This_ being… modeling, maybe? She feels a minor buzz of excitement at the idea of being a model, even if for some figure studies—whatever those may be—rather than photography itself. The closest she’s gotten is the exorbitant number of selfies she posts on Instagram. (Though that’s mostly a thing of the past now, given the whole Radio Quiet Zone thing.)

Dani glances up, distracted, from where she’s in the middle of setting her sketchbook down on the easel. “Oh! Um, lemme grab you a chair or something—I don’t have people in here a lot, sorry it’s a mess,” she says, already shuffling across the room.

“No, it’s cool,” Aubrey hurries to say. “I think I’d be more concerned if you were super used to having people in here—oh, not that that would be a bad thing unless it was a bad thing for you, I—I mean, it’s your business—” She mentally mimes zipping her lips and tells herself to shut the hell up.

Dani snickers as she drags a stool over from an open closet. All Aubrey sees inside before her attention diverts to the much more interesting moving person is a lot of notebook spines. The thought that they’re sketchbooks, not just any old notebooks, crosses Aubrey’s mind, but it’s wiped when she follows Dani’s movement toward a clean area of the floor in front of the easel.

“Don’t worry, it’s cool.” Dani gestures at the stool. “Here, you can make yourself comfortable while I get my stuff set up.”

Aubrey blinks, still a little dazed, and holds out a thumbs up, already following Dani across the room. “Sounds good.”

As Dani shuffles off again, she hops up onto the stool. It’s a little higher than she’d expected—she can’t help but wonder who usually sits here, since she likes to think she’s taller than average. She’s taller than both Duck and Ned, at least; not Mama, but not many people are taller than Mama. Whenever she’s close enough to Dani to be able to tell, she’s usually focused on other things than their heights, so she doesn’t know about that either. She hums with a frown.

Dani’s moving too fast for her to be able to tell what she’s doing, so Aubrey twists to study the wall nearest to her. There’s a hanging plant dangling from the ceiling, leaves drooping from the basket. Aubrey glances toward the window to find several more plants in small pots, mostly succulents from the looks of it. She wonders if any of them have names. She decides to ask Dani later, half-tempted to whip out her phone and write it down in her Notes app but deciding not to at the last second—this probably means she won’t remember, but she’s too content now to worry about it.

Her attention turns back to the wall, where she notices several pieces of paper pinned to the wall—not just any pieces of paper, she realizes after another glance-over, but illustrations. Headshots and busts, for the most part, but there are a couple of looser full-body drawings in there. And they’re of the other residents of Amnesty Lodge.

Answering Aubrey’s question about the stool, there are quite a few of Barclay, stature and scruffy face unmistakable, and even a couple of him in his Bigfoot form. Aubrey chuckles at the mental image of Bigfoot hovering in this very room and posing with both hands behind his head as Dani’d drawn him. There are lots of Jake, too; these ones are sketchier, like Dani hadn’t had enough time to study him. Aubrey wonders if hers will look like that. There are some of Mama, too, different head angles capturing the shape of her nose and the line of her jaw. There’s even one of Stern, small and undetailed but definitely him. Another sketch seems to bear Aubrey’s distinct hair, too small and far away for Aubrey to verify that, and she leans ever so slightly forward, edging off the stool—

“Sorry about the wait,” says Dani, making Aubrey jump and snap her hands down to the edge of the stool to keep herself from falling. Dani pauses guiltily. “And, um, for scaring you. You okay?”

Aubrey waves her hands, praying they don’t catch fire like her face so desperately wants to right now. “Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it! And I was just—um—I was admiring your other works, and I got a little absorbed—I do that sometimes, ‘cause ADHD focus is pretty all-or-nothing, y’know—” She shakes her head, cutting herself off. “Not the point. Um, these are really nice!”

Dani laughs and rubs the side of her neck. “Aw, they’re just sketches. Little things I do in my spare time.”

“They’re good sketches, then, especially if you just do them in your spare time!” insists Aubrey. “Even the messy ones of Jake are really detailed and expressive. I can’t wait to see what you draw of me.”

Another nervous giggle. Aubrey is totally ranking it in her top five favorite sounds as of the moment. (Number one is the _click_ her spinner ring makes when she presses down on the spinning part, but it—as well as the rest of the list, scrambled as it is because numbered rankings aren’t great for her—changes often; last week it was the sound her fire made when she summoned it, and the week before that it was the sound her fire made when she _extinguished_ it.)

“Well, thanks. I really appreciate that.” Dani drops into the chair behind the easel, rifling through a large pencil bag as she does. Once she’s gotten a pencil and kneaded eraser out, she sets the bag down on the floor next to her and swings one leg up to rest her ankle on the opposite knee. Aubrey adds _weird sitting position_ to her list of reasons why Dani might be into girls. Dani lifts her head, eyes wide, and for a split second Aubrey wonders if she’s forgotten to mention mind-reading abilities before she says, “Oh, right, I didn’t really tell you what to be doing, did I?”

Aubrey breathes a mental sigh of relief. “Nope. Am I supposed to be doing anything specific?”

“Uh, just go into some kinda pose that’s natural for you,” says Dani, spinning a pencil between her fingers as she glances between Aubrey and her sketchbook. “Maybe something where you’re facing away from me, because I need to practice more angles—oh, yeah, that’s nice!”

Aubrey has turned so her back is to Dani, elbows resting on her knees as she slides one leg up toward her stomach. Her head is cocked at an angle that she can still Dani out of the corner of her eye with. “You said I could move, right?” she asks, already moving her fingers.

“Yeah, as long as it’s not, like, a drastic change from the original pose.”

Aubrey moves her spinner ring to her index finger so she can spin it with her thumb. “So this is cool?”

“Can’t even tell what you’re doing, so sure thing,” says Dani with a grin.

“Cool, cool.”

There’s not much talking from then on, just the gentle scratching of Dani’s pencil strokes and her occasional incoherent mumbles, which Aubrey learns after the third time are to herself. Aubrey talks as much as she can without changing poses. This is somewhat difficult, because she keeps wanting to turn around to face Dani so she’s able to pay better attention to anything Dani might say—which isn’t much aside from hums and nods and rare head shakes.

Dani’s only been sketching for a couple of minutes, Aubrey thinks, when she looks up from her easel and says, “You can change poses now.”

So Aubrey situates herself to face Dani again, hands stretched out behind her to clutch the back of the stool instead and legs crossed at the ankles and head slightly lowered. Dani beams and goes back to drawing. Now that Aubrey has a frame of reference for the amount of time a single pose takes, she’s more comfortable sitting still; she’s still not frozen in place, wiggling her toes inside her boot as Dani sticks out her tongue in concentration, but she’s not all over the place.

By the next time Dani asks her to switch poses, the silence has grown on the side of uncomfortable. As she’s moving, Aubrey asks, “Could we put on some music?”

Dani blinks, then jolts to her feet. “Yeah, of course,” she says, hurrying across the room to drag a boombox out of the closet, where it’s resting on the highest shelf. As she’s turning back, she seems to notice Aubrey’s dumbstruck look and gives her a wry, lopsided grin. “Sorry, did you forget you’re in Kepler now? I don’t have any CDs, so we’ll have to settle for WVMR.”

Aubrey’s eyes narrow in suspicion, but it fades when Dani turns on the radio and Etta James comes on. She nods approvingly instead. Throughout the next pose, where she’s sitting in profile view with her hands resting on the back of her neck, the rhythmic tapping of her fingers and toes increases.

Three sketches later, Dani flips the page of her sketchbook—either she’s drawing small or her sketchbook is really big, Aubrey decides—and pauses with her pencil hovering over the paper. She peers up, worrying her lip between her teeth as “Feeling Good” hangs between them. Aubrey stops quietly humming along in favor of frowning back. She drops the current pose, legs stretched out and hands on her knees like she’s leaning forward, and draws one leg up to her chest to lean her cheek against it.

“Could you take your sunglasses off for this one?”

Yet another question that’s able to stop Aubrey dead, though this time she’s frozen for even shorter.

Dani ducks her head so her face isn’t as visible. “It’s okay if you’re not comfortable with that, but—” She hesitates, rubbing the side of her neck and taking a deep breath before she lifts her head to make eye contact again. “I want to do a study of your face, too. It’s—it’s a nice face.”

Aubrey’s body doesn’t freeze, but her thoughts come to a complete and utter halt for approximately five seconds, which is quite the feat. “Sure, that’d be neat!” she says, voice breaking. Her hands flail a little as she whirls to face Dani head-on and drags her stool closer. “Is this good?”

“Hmm.” Dani’s already bending closer to her sketchbook, and she scratches out a couple lines before she glances up with a considering look. “Maybe tilt your head a little more to the right? No, sorry—my right, your left. Yeah, that’s a good angle.”

“I can still move, yeah?”

“Aside from your head, go for it.”

As Dani resumes sketching, strokes slower and more measured than they had been earlier, Aubrey twiddles her thumbs and smiles at the sound of Aretha blasting out of the boombox speakers. She wants to make friends with this DJ. She’s halfway through imagining what they might be like when “Respect” fades out to an ad break, and she almost moves—but Dani’s still working, focus narrowed to her canvas, so she stills and forces herself to relax. Dani’s drawing doesn’t span a single song this time, nor even a couple—it’s closer to half an hour, give or take probably a lot because Aubrey’s perception of time is very, very flawed.

It gives Aubrey a chance to study _Dani_. She’s not putting her findings to paper like Dani is, but they’ll be in her mind, even if only for a fleeting moment because her memory is also very flawed. When she’s concentrated, Dani’s nose scrunches up and her eyebrows pinch together to create a crease in the middle of her forehead. Her eyes dart up to check Aubrey’s face every couple beats, but her hand is moving the entire time.

And, look, Aubrey had known at first sight that Dani was cute—no, capital-C Cute. It had been something of a subconscious realization, making her hands a little shakier than they would normally be during her magic routine. As she’s grown closer to Dani, she’s found out how much she appreciates her personality, and her attraction—again subconsciously—has grown into something truer and more personal than a casual _oh, yeah, she’s cute_ kind of aesthetic appreciation.

But it’s now, sitting here and watching Dani as Dani watches her, that she processes _how_ cute Dani is. And how much she genuinely likes her. And how much she’d like to kiss that nose and make it unscrunch, or smooth the line between her brows with her thumb and then kiss the spot there, or intertwine her fingers with Dani’s while Dani works (and then probably have to switch hands because it impedes Dani’s drawing but she doesn’t want to stop holding hands), or—

“Aaaand… done!” says Dani, interrupting Aubrey’s very embarrassing thought process. She drops off of her chair with a flourish, then slides her sketchbook off the easel and examines the pages. It _is_ pretty big, Aubrey can tell now. Dani looks up, smiling from ear to ear. “Thank you so much, Aubrey, really. This has been really nice.”

“It has,” agrees Aubrey, heartbeat rising. She still has no clue what the etiquette in this situation is. Does she leave now? Does she ask to see the completed works? (Because she’d love to.) Does she ask literally anything else? Does she—

“You can move your head now, by the way.” Dani’s grin gets a little smaller, more self-conscious. “Sorry, I should’ve led with that.”

“Oh—yeah, no, I—I wanted to, um, still be looking at you.” Aubrey scratches the warm side of her face and lowers her gaze, which might slightly undermine her words. “I should be thanking _you_ for asking me to do this. It’s—like you said, it’s been really nice.”

When she chances a glance up, Dani is flushed, eyes wide and focused on Aubrey. Their eyes meet for a second before Dani drops her gaze back to the sketchbook in her hands, grip tightening. _Huh_. Dani takes a subtle step closer. Aubrey leans closer on instinct.

“Can I—” She hesitates. Much as she wants to ask, she knows that sometimes artists are shy about their craft—even if that’s never been her personal outlook, wanting to share her work with everyone who’d listen as soon as she started performing—and she wouldn’t want to make Dani uncomfortable. So she keeps her voice light, open to refusal, when she asks, “Can I see? The one of my face, at least.”

It takes Dani a second to respond. When she does, it’s not with words; it’s by passing her sketchbook over, one side folded back so Aubrey is just looking at the sketch of her face.

Aubrey stares at the drawings, and her lips part as she takes it in. She’s never been self-deprecating, necessarily, but she doesn’t think about how she looks a lot. She’s never cared much aside from whether her outfit both matches her whole aesthetic and, most importantly, her hair, which she dyes on whims of _hey I bet pink would look real fuckin’ cool right now_ —and the knowledge that old people will stare in distaste and kids will look at her like she’s a superhero—more so than any conscious effort to improve her appearance. Her piercings and tattoos had been added on more or less the same principles. The way Aubrey sees it, her appearance is something she can’t really control and most judgments based on it are arbitrary, and she’s fine with that.

But she’s never seen herself the way Dani has drawn her.

In a way, it’s so much more revealing than any mirror could be—it doesn’t have the same objective take her reflection does, nor the skewed image of herself in her own mind’s eye. This is how Dani sees her, and it’s breathtaking.

Dani’s style is semi-realistic, but not to the point that Aubrey would think she was looking at a black-and-white picture if she didn’t know better. That said, she’s nailed Aubrey’s features: her slightly asymmetrical eyes, shading indicating which one is orange and which is brown; the arch of her eyebrows and faint hairs in between; the crooked smile that she knows to be her default one; the mole beside her nose that most people don’t even notice, let alone draw the exact oval shape of. Her hair is simplified, but the texture is still on point, coils looking like they’re about to pop off the page, and the parts where Aubrey’s hair is shaved blend neatly into her skin. She’s only shown from the shoulders up—the outlines of her vest and shirt fade off the edge of the page. Even just the face conveys enough emotion that Aubrey’s chest aches looking down at it.

She squeezes the edge of the sketchbook and inhales. “This is _gorgeous_ , Dani,” she says breathily, realizing her eyes are watering. “I—I—you’re really fucking cool, you know that?”

Dani gives that soft, nervous laugh again, bumping her bare foot against Aubrey’s boot. “ _You’re_ really cool,” she retorts. Aubrey’s heart is still stuttering when she adds, “So you like it? I didn’t, uh, mess anything on your face up? Make your mole look like a zit?”

“First off, that wouldn’t be messing things up, I don’t really care if I have acne as long as it doesn’t, like, hurt,” says Aubrey without looking up. She can still see Dani nodding sagely—which tracks, because Aubrey’s seen uncovered pimples around Dani’s face, scattered among the freckles like 3-D versions, a lot. “And second off, of course not! This is—this is really—it’s just really fucking good, oh my God. My hair looks so nice, and you didn’t try to make my face perfect or anything.” She jabs at her eyes. “Like, my eyes aren’t completely symmetrical—like they are in real life—and my makeup is smeared—again, like it is right now. That’s so cool.”

“The eye sizes were, uh, kinda a mistake, ‘cause I’m not that great at making things symmetrical,” says Dani, scuffing her foot on the ground, “but hey, I’ll take ‘cool.’” She grins, leaning closer to take the sketchbook back. “I usually hang my stuff up in here, like you noticed, but—” somehow both careless and gentle at once, she tears the page off along the dotted line underneath the sketchbook’s spine, then hands it back to a gaping Aubrey “—do you wanna keep this one?”

“Oh, I—” Aubrey stares back at her own face. Her lips slip into a much bigger, unrestrained grin than the one on the paper, but also one that’s more worried. “Is that, like, okay? You really don’t want to hold onto this one?”

Dani shakes her head. “I think you’ll get a lot more out of it than me. Besides, you can always model for me again later—if you’re up to it, obviously,” she adds hastily.

Aubrey’s grip tightens on the edges of the sketch, then loosens again as the fear that she’ll rip it sets in. Or set it on fire. Oh, shit, maybe she _should_ leave it with Dani. Before she can talk herself into that, Aubrey blurts, “I’d love to do this again, yeah! It was super fun. Um—” She licks her lips, sudden bravery taking her over. “I—I would love to hang out with you more in general, to be honest.”

“Oh,” says Dani quietly, jaw hanging open. Then she smiles again, soft despite the sharp teeth it’s filled with. “I’d—I would love that too, Aubrey. Um…” She coughs into her fist, smile still visible around the edge of her hand, and then stuffs both hands into her pockets. “I’ll talk to you later, then?”

“Yeah! For sure!”

As Aubrey leaves the room, feeling like she’s walking on air, she hugs the drawing to her chest with a triumphant grin. If she punches the air with one fist once she’s out of eyeshot of Dani’s doorway, then, well, that’s no one’s business but hers, is it?

She heads back to the lobby to find Dr. Harris Bonkers still asleep—he’s begun to snore at some point. It had lost most of its cuteness after she’d owned him for somewhere around six months, growing more awful than adorable, but Aubrey’s also used to it, so she collapses beside him. Clutching the drawing like a lifeline, she heaves a lovestruck sigh and sinks into the couch. Dr. Harris Bonkers’ ear twitches at the shift of weight. Other than that, he doesn’t stir, staying—and looking—dead to the world.

“Dr. Harris Bonkers,” she says anyway, sighing again, “I had the most _amazing_ time…”

**Author's Note:**

> if you want a vague reference of what the aubrey sketch looks like, here's [[my design](http://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com/post/184002703801/id-three-illustrations-against-light-yellow)]
> 
> anyway, thanks so much for reading!! if you have time to spare, i really appreciate all comments & kudos <3
> 
> [tumblr](https://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/birdmarrow)


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